HARUKO OKANO
a bright sunny day in the garden of Haruko with a three foot plant that is flowering, in the icotina family. it's flowers are clindrical and green based with bright pops of pink at the tips. it is surrounded by plants. In the distance there are stakes and fences of the other gardeners in Sahalli Park
Vivienne, Julia, and Derya were gifted a community garden plot by Ron in 2012 at Sahalli Park Community Garden. There we met Haruko’s garden many years before we met Haruko. Calendula, borage, poppies, milk thistle and many more medicinal plants growing together, supporting each other and forming a dense, vibrant, interdependent, stronger together community. Meeting Haruko, she showed us that these are intrinsic qualities in her practice as an artist. Haruko has been a mentor for Looking at the Garden Fence and is the name giver for The Commons Garden.
Haruko Okano ↗ is a third generation Japanese-Canadian born in Toronto in the last year of World War II. Having been raised in the foster care system she considers herself a cultural hybrid. An advocate for preserving the Canadian wilderness, she has back packed and canoed across the northern areas of this country from Ontario to BC. She now lives in Vancouver. A strong supporter of the grass roots movements of a community, she engages in community developed art practices, mentors those in the arts whether they be leisure artists or emerging professionals and engages in teaching teachers the value of art as a catalyst for social change. Collaboration is her surname and with that in mind, she is the curator of a little community based public art gallery tucked away in the corner of her local library. Energy is her middle name. She is known to launch province wide projects and outreach to artists in rural communities.

She is classified by the Canada Council as an interdisciplinary artist who is most active in the visual arts field and community engaged practices. In 2000 she was honoured with the VIVA award from the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation for her contributions to the arts. Her second discipline is as a poet having recently been awarded Editor’s Choice award by Poetry.Com. Her last discipline is in Performance Art and is best known for her performance in High(bridi)Tea and in walking the talk in Drag Culture.